WRITE
ATTEND
READ
SUPPORT
Meet THe Team
In this class, we will uncover important, sometimes under-appreciated, elements that make for fine storytelling including foreshadowing, recurrence, free indirect discourse, and chronic tension. Examining passages from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall, we will discuss the DNA that goes into a novel's first page or a story's first paragraph. In other words, we'll explore how the building blocks of every story arc, character, tension, or motif are often found at the very beginning of a book. We'll identify ten key elements to foreground in the early pages of a manuscript, ten tips for finding one's way through a story's murky middle, and a handful of tricks for approaching the art of revision.
• In-Class Writing Lift: Light
• Homework: None
• Workshopping Drafts: None
David James Poissant is the author of the novel Lake Life, a New York Times Editors' Choice selection, and The Heaven of Animals: Stories, a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and the PEN/Bingham Prize. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Best American Experimental Writing, Best Small Fictions, and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Central Florida, where he serves as the Editor of The Florida Review.
David is new to The Porch. Welcome!
